No Regrets, No Wisdom

by Skye Moody

Liv Fun: Vol 1 – Issue 3

She’s a new neighbor with a chatter habit. Suddenly, the picket fence isn’t high enough. Mabel is yakking my ear off, spinning her life story in a nutshell the size of New Jersey. She pauses to pontificate, “I regret nothing.”

I’ve got plenty of regrets, and keep them to myself, but my brain starts ticking them off, the latest being my regret at coming out to greet the new neighbor over the back fence. Mabel’s on a smug, self-satisfied roll that has the effect of dredging up my long-suppressed regrets, not so much for, say, passing on a scholarship to law school as for my personal peccadillos, the actions or inactions that negatively affected others.

As she natters up another sanctimonious “no-regrets” scenario, Mabel’s lilywhite life story dredges up more guilt-infested memories, until my thoughts drift back decades and every regrettable act I’ve committed from the age of reason until now resurrects in the halo of Mabel.

Fifth grade, in Miss Peacock’s class: When she opens the window to yell at some truants outside, a classmate whispers, “Push her out!” and I try. (In truth, my brother pushed her, not me.) Mabel wouldn’t have done that. Then there’s college in Mexico City, when I dabbled in peyote. Mabel was probably drug-free and a virgin until marriage, at least in her sanitized self-depiction.

Inadvertently, Mabel has kicked up the dust devils of a lifetime of sins that live in my heart and haunt my spirit. I recall how those first innocent misdemeanors mutated to more reproachful behavior as I navigated the swells and cyclones of an adult world.

Read Entire Article

Liv Fun

by Leisure Care
Autumn 2012
View Table of Contents

A Mother’s Story?
by Carlene Cross

It has been more than three years since the death of my son. I have recovered from the shock, the months when disbelief muddled reality, when nightmares of his voice calling “Mom” drew me out of sweat-drenched sheets.
Read More

Delinquently Damned
by Jeff Wozer

I just Googled “how to forgive” and received 81,100,000 results. To put this into perspective, a “Rolling Stones” search only produced 31,700,000 results. I used the Rolling Stones for comparison, because I cannot forgive them for not performing a 50^th anniversary tour this year. Jerks.
Read More